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Old 11-17-2020, 06:58 PM   #1
Prince Charon
 
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Default [Psi/Space] Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown

For most of humanity, First Contact occurred in 2021, when a flying saucer landed in Hyde Park a bit after lunchtime, and the Irari surrendered to the (practically defunct) British Empire. This was as much of a surprise to the British as it was to everybody else who wasn't a conspiracy theorist - for one thing, they hadn't been aware that they were at war.

As it turned out, the Irari leaders had declared war just before entering British airspace (transmitting the declaration in a language and format no-one on Earth understood), shot a few lasers at the grass in Hyde Park (doing fairly little damage), landed, and signed the document of surrender. They had done this because the Irari are emphatically unsuited to and uninterested in ruling themselves, and wanted someone else to do it, while the British had a long history of going into other people's lands and telling them what to do, while at the same time being generally nice in the modern era, and are currently desperate for a new trading partner and thus in no position to refuse (something the Irari knew from having studied Earth's internet). Thus, the Irari and their client species (the Coeb'lds and the Gormelites) are now under the somewhat confused and reluctant authority of the British Star Empire (OK, Boris Johnson wasn't so reluctant, but a lot of others were).

(In case anyone decides to ask, they do leave a few saucers in orbit, to neutralize attacks in the event that someone panics and decides to nuke Britain. They also access the internet to share their older tech - anything one TL behind or earlier - freely with the world, while the British government gets the modern stuff; some of it, even the weird stuff (mostly psychotronics), is surprisingly easy to make. The files are in English, but most of them can also be found in a few dozen other Earth languages.)

One may ask how the Irari got here from their star system, and did so at a speed that would allow their worlds to be ruled by the British. They traveled via a permanent wormhole network, having discovered a partial 'map' of same about thirty years ago on a large black monolith on Irar's bigger moon; said monolith is believed to be about 66 million years old. (This, interestingly enough, is consistent with the period in which the earliest recognizable ancestor species of the Irari appeared abruptly in Irar's fossil record; said ancestor appears to have been some variety of Late Cretaceous pterodactyloid, which along with several other animals introduced at that time (apparently the only land animals on the planet) speciated to fill a wide range of ecological niches.) The Irar system is listed as having five wormholes, of which four have been rediscovered; the Sol system is listed as having seven wormholes, with only the one leading to Irar having been rediscovered.

Wormhole exploration even with the map requires finding the wormholes, which they're getting better at (the map helps, mainly by narrowing the area they need to search, but it's too old and too damaged to give them exact locations, and optical telescopes are of little help). This has involved a few vessels that did not return, as well as very recently three that they know were attacked by space pirates - one was attacked by Memer-and-Saret pirates and rescued by a Memer-and-Saret space patrol cruiser, another was attacked by Memer-and-Saret pirates and rescued itself due to the experimental weapons on board being particularly effective, and the third was attacked by what they believe to be pirates of an unknown race or races, and rescued by something that they didn't understand, which appeared to be some sort of giant energy being (an Aurora). Interestingly, the Memer-and-Saret and the unknown pirates also use roughly saucer-like craft, though many details do differ between species and designs (much like cars are in most cases broadly similar in appearance, but you can still usually tell the difference between a sports car and a station wagon of the same TL). Due to analysis of the weapons and the force-shield strength of the Memer-and-Saret saucers, and the unknown-race pirates' saucer, the Irari recommend nuclear shaped charges of 25 kilotons or greater for use against heavily-shielded targets (see also the Casaba-Howitzer article in The Path of Cunning #3).

(There may be other forms of FTL in-setting, but the Irari don't have one yet, and haven't directly encountered anyone who does.)

Technologically, the Irari are a TL(6+3)^ (Dieselpunk/Atompunk, with psi-tech) civilization (having oddly gone from vacuum tubes directly to vacuum microelectronics, among other things). Irari Gadgeteers are fairly common compared to other races (a little over one in a thousand), generally with a few limitations including either 'ESP, -10%,' or 'Probability Alteration, -10%,' and often 'Focused: <specific skill, skillset, or type of technology>' (value varies depending on narrowness), Accessibility limitations, Temporary Disadvantages, and/or other limitations. (Quick Gadgeteer exists in this setting, but is always psionic, and frequently accompanied by some form of Backlash or Nuisance Effect, or Temporary Disadvantages like Megalomania or Weirdness Magnet.) Psychotronics are very common, and closely integrated to many other technologies (including all 'superscience' tech), though biological psi-tech is rather limited, and the Irari had basically no psi drugs at all until encountering the Coeb'ld homeworld. (I'm working on a separate post in this setting for psi abilities and related details, because there's no way it'll fit under the character limit on this one.) Studying the history of Irari space programs is like reading & watching accounts of a few different people playing versions of Kerbal Space Program on supercomputers, but mostly in grainy black & white, with sapient pterosaur-people, a more realistic physics engine, and no physicsless parts (psychotronics are not physicsless, they just use aspects of the physics engine of reality that we haven't discovered yet). Fewer deaths than you might expect from that description, though. As the Irari homeworld has historically had more copper than iron accessible to miners, they tend to use lots of bronze or brass, and other alloys.

The Irari believe themselves and the Coeb'lds to be genetically engineered, and know for a fact that the Gormelites are.

The Gormelites are at roughly TL7^ and falling (their ancestor race may have been TL8^ with TL9^-10^ bio-tech, or TL9^ while retaining a lot of durable TL8^ second-line equipment, and having some experimental TL10^ tech). Many Gormelites have a phobia about AI due to the use and actions of robots and other artificial intelligences during the Final War. A distant human relative, their extinct ancestor race appears to be descended from Paranthropus/Australopithecus. The Gormelites are the only ones in the Irari sphere of influence to have proper police forces (mostly gendarmeries) from a human perspective, due to older Gormelites who had been MPs & gendarmes before the Final War attempting to continue the tradition, with varying degrees of success. The Irari first encountered their world a bit over fifteen years ago (Earth and Irar years are pretty close in length).

The Coeb'ld homeworld's most advanced civilization is at TL(5+1)^-(5+2)^, with fluidic computers and advanced steam engines. Coeb'lds are mostly blue-skinned (and are basically GURPS Banestorm Kobolds with a range of useful Talents), but appear to be related to humans through Homo floresiensis, H. sapiens denisova, or H. s. neanderthalensis. Their homeworld has few fossil fuels (and a short fossil record), but lots of plants, including several types of peat. They were 'discovered' by the Irari about nine years ago.

The Memer-and-Saret are at early TL10-equivalent with early TL9^-equivalent psychotronics, and are the only other space-faring race the Irari have made diplomatic contact with; they were first encountered three years ago. The second group of pirates appear to be roughly TL10^-equivalent, and may not be all from a single race. The giant energy beings (Auroras: 3,000-point psychic 'space gods' without a clear template) are beyond technology as we understand it. Species that the Memer-and-Saret have informed the Irari of include Sparrials (TL9^-equivalent), Drachids (dragons; TL12^-equivalent), Verms, Mrowruu (Felinoids from Basic Set p261; TL10^-equivalent Bio-Tech), and Traders (roughly TL12^+). (If the Markann exist in this setting, they should be TL11^, or possibly TL12^.)


Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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